Incumbent Sauda Baraka, Working Families Party candiadte for Bridgeport Board of Education

Incumbent Sauda Baraka, Working Families Party candiadte for Bridgeport Board of Education

Photo: Amy Mortensen

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School board candidates talk Vallas, vision

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BRIDGEPORT -- Superintendent of Schools Paul Vallas wasn't at the Board of Education candidate forum at St. John's Episcopal Church on Fairfield Avenue Thursday night, but his name and actions shaped most of the hour-long debate.

"That's the No. 1 question a lot of people ask," said Councilman Andre Baker, D-139, who is running on both the Democratic and Working Families Party lines on the Nov. 5 ballot.

But Baker, like the other eight candidates running for five open school board seats, dodged the question. Instead of giving a simple yes or no, Baker said he thought the board needed to learn how to work together before making important decisions.

Republican Joe Larcheveque said it was "premature" to talk about firing Vallas since the city is still waiting for the state Supreme Court's decision on a case challenging Vallas' qualifications for the job.

Fellow GOP candidate Steve Best said he felt Vallas had provided good groundwork during his time here. Larcheveque agreed, but said he worried whether there were efforts made to continue the positive changes that had been implemented.

DemocratsHoward Gardner and David Hennessey said the battles between the superintendent and school board aren't dependent on who the superintendent is. It's up to the board to establish itself as a body accountable to the voters, not the superintendent.

"The superintendent should report to the board, not the other way around," Gardner said. "We intend to right that organizational structure."

The terms "we" and "our team" were used often by the Democrats and the two Working Families Party candidates -- Sauda Baraka and Eric Stewart-Alicea. The five candidates have been campaigning together and said several times throughout the hourlong forum that they hope to be elected as a group because they believe that together they can be most effective.

When asked how they would bring decorum to the often-hostile interactions at school board meetings, Baker replied, "I finally have a group of people I see I can work with. I'm really excited about the people I'm working with and campaigning with."

The team references were made so often that Larcheveque and fellow Republican John Weldon said that it appeared they were running against a group intent on creating a super-majority to rival the so-called Democratic machine's past majority control over the board.

"That's not what this is about," said Weldon, who accused current school board members of trying to micromanage the school system. "It's about independence and the issues. For a lot of people, Bridgeport public schools is the only option they've got, and I'm here to say we've got to make it work because it's all they've got."

"I put children before politics," responded Baraka, a former Republican and the only incumbent seeking re-election.

Working Families candidate Stewart-Alicea, who is president of the district's Parent Advisory Council, said all too often the focus is on administrators and policies instead of the children's needs. He said more parental involvement is sorely needed.

Another question addressed the need for more preschool options in the city and the fact suburban children often enter kindergarten with more knowledge than their urban peers.

Best said more resources should be devoted to the elementary schools, while both Stewart-Alicea and Larcheveque went a step further. They said all elementary schools should have pre-kindergarten classes available.

Weldon said providing more options would work only if the options were sufficiently marketed and made easily available to parents.

But Baraka and Gardner said funding is an issue in the district. They noted that reducing the costs of other parts of the budget -- such as legal fees and administrator costs -- could free up funding for preschool expansion.

Comparing the learning process to a factory production line, Gardner said when a problem is found with a product, the production process must be traced back and corrected at the point the problem began.

"It just makes sense that if we have limited resources, we shift our attention to the start of the process and prevent it," he said.